Shadow City is Natalie Conyer’s follow up to her award winning debut Present Tense. Present Tense was set in South Africa and focussed on South African issues. In Shadow City, Conyer brings her Cape Town police detective Schalk Laurens to Sydney in search of a missing girl, allowing her to dig into more global concerns.
In Sydney, local police detective Sergeant Jackie Rose and her partner are called to the scene of a death of a young woman in Chinatown. When Rose finds that the woman was an international student and comes from a family in South Africa, the case is quickly handed off to the Federal Police. Meanwhile in South Africa, Schalk Laurens is being smeared by his old nemesis and is stood down while his colleagues try to clear his name. In order to get some distance he decides to visit his daughter in Sydney but before he goes, he is asked to try and track down a girl who has gone missing while in Australia on a scholarship. By the laws of literary coincidence Laurens’ path crosses with Rose and her team and a connection emerges with her former case. Soon the two, and their respective teams are working together to try and find the missing girl and solve the earlier case.
Schalk Laurens continues to be an intriguing protagonist for Conyer to focus on – a white policeman dedicated to helping build a new South Africa but with skeletons in his closet. In Shadow City he connects with his daughter and finds a community of expat South Africans in Sydney and, given what is happening at home, has to decide whether he will join them permanently. But Conyer also introduces Jackie Rose, a dogged investigator, coming to a point where she also has to make some life choices. These two well drawn characters are surrounded by a range of delightful and interesting side characters.
Shadow City is very much a procedural. Using this form, Conyer manages to build and maintain the tension even if readers work out what is going on or pick some of the twists before they are revealed. And it deals with some pretty dark contemporary issues particularly around the people who prey on those striving to improve their situation.
Conyer uses both her Sydney and Cape Town locations well, taking readers to both familiar and not-so familiar parts of both cities. As the name suggests, she digs into some of the more unsavoury aspects of Sydney to consider what might be going on behind the scenery. And in doing so delivers the whole package with Shadow City – engaging characters, a great sense of place and a page-turning crime story with real world issues on its mind.
Robert Goodman
For more of Robert’s reviews, visit his blog Pile By the Bed
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Robert Goodman is a book reviewer, former Ned Kelly Awards judge and institutionalised public servant based in Sydney. This and over 450 more book reviews can be found on his website Pile By the Bed.
